"The time in Nur-Sultan is 1.40 in the afternoon, and the outside temperature is minus two degrees," said the flight attendant, way too casually, as our plane from Almaty landed yesterday.

Minus two degrees? In the middle of the afternoon??

Now, we had done our research, and we did know that Nur-Sultan (previously known, in reverse chronological order, as Astana, Akmola, Tselinograd, and Akmolinsk) was likely to be considerably colder than Almaty. But at the end of April we weren't anticipating it would be THIS much colder...

Anyway, the sun was shining, so we put on several layers of clothes, and ventured out.

What a difference 1,000 km makes... There's no-one out lounging on cafe terraces here, blankets or no. The buds on the trees are in their teeny-tiny infancy, and the birds look fluffed up and cold, as though nest-building is the last thing on their minds. And it's April! Imagine January and February... It certainly renews your admiration for the nomads who fashioned a very cultured way of life here.

The sky was as blue as the Kazakhstan flag, though, setting off to perfection some of the epic architecture that has arisen here since 1998, when the city became Kazakhstan's capital.









Today, the forecast said it was going to be even colder than yesterday, with little in the way of sun, and "flurries" of snow.

A great day for the National Museum, we thought. This is housed in an amazing building, and the quality of the exhibitions is excellent. We were there for about four hours, didn't get round everything, and left only because we were hungry... So that's my only complaint: they need a cafe...



There's a large gallery charting the city's history, and its various incarnations as fortress, centre of commercial and cultural exchange, focal point of the Soviet "Virgin Lands" campaign, and capital. If you're around at 1 pm, you can see the new city literally rising from the earth in an animated display.



Some commentators are very dismissive of Nur-Sultan. Unfairly so, I think. For sure, it's not all finished yet. But it's an amazing urban vision, and I find it very impressive.

The other don't-miss section is the "Hall of Gold". This contains case after case of treasures unearthed from various burial sites. Upstairs is bit more detail on how archaeologists and other experts go about working out what they've actually found when such graves are discovered.

The history section contains many poignant records of Kazakhstan's afflicted past, when it variously served as the site of detention camps and nuclear tests and man-made environmental catastrophes.

We noticed, half-way round our museum trawl, that it was snowing pretty heavily outside... This was not what anyone would consider "flurries". This was a full-on snowstorm.

"Maybe, by the time we go for lunch, it will have stopped," we thought.

It hadn't.



So when we were forced from the museum by hunger, we hot-footed it to the nearest cafe, Mine Coffee.

PT hates snow (I know -- not very tern-like). Definitely the best way to deal with the white menace is watch it through the window of a comfy cafe, while drinking hot sea buckthorn tea, and eating potato pancakes with smoked salmon, sour cream, and grilled vegetables...



PT fundamentally wasn't going to walk any further in the SNOW. So we called up a Yandex cab (this is the ride-hailing app round here, and it works very well), and headed off through the blizzard (OK, I'm exaggerating, but it was still snowing quite hard) to the Khan Shatyr. This is a huge, tent-like structure that houses various shopping, eating, and entertainment outlets. It even has a very cute little monorail.





It's evening now, and the snow has stopped. But it's scheduled to be back again tomorrow, dammit...

Apart from the SNOW, I'm enjoying Nur-Sultan, and feel a redoubled respect for its people, now and down through the ages.